Microsoft® Windows® Internals: Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000, 4th Edition

Conclusion

In this chapter, we've examined how the Windows memory manager implements virtual memory management. As with most modern operating systems, each process is given access to a private address space, protecting one process's memory from another's but allowing processes to share memory efficiently and securely. Advanced capabilities, such as the inclusion of mapped files and the ability to sparsely allocate memory, are also available. The Windows environment subsystem makes most of the memory manager's capabilities available to applications through the Windows API.

The memory manager's implementation relies on lazy-evaluation techniques whenever possible to avoid performing time-consuming and unnecessary operations unless they are required. ...